Good (non-Spectrum) games to explore in
Someone on gamefaqs asked "Reccommend me some great games that involve exploring a large land. Games that strongly feature discovering new areas and finding new places and things within the game. I'm looking for a game where I can freely roam and explore, and where I will find great satisfaction in discovering new places and areas."
(S)He posted this on the PS2 forum, so I recommended GTA: San Andreas, which is the only PS2 game I know of that fits that description. I also recommended Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the XBox 1 and XBox 360 respectively, in case the poster has those machines too.
Anyway, what other games, on any system, do you think fit this description? To a degree, I'd have said Bully, Carmageddon, GTA3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA IV, though these aren't as expansive as San Andreas, Morrowind, or Oblivion.
Red Dead Redemption is supposed to be very open and varied, but I haven't played it so I can't comment.
And as a matter of interest, we may as well do the Speccy, although the limited memory does really limit the chance of finding unique or too varied things. Elite, Where Time Stood Still, Turbo Esprit, Knightlore, Tir Na Nog, and Mercenary were all games that I went exploring in, to greater or less satisfactory results - Mercenary and WTSS were especially fun to explore as you did find interesting things, whereas Turbo Esprit (though undoubtedly brilliant) didn't throw up anything new after a few minutes of play, and Elite never varied much, except in the text descriptions of planet you were near too.
Edit: Just remembered; Damocles and Mercenary III, two incredible games (Damocles was Mercenary II) on the Atari ST that I spent ages exploring.
(S)He posted this on the PS2 forum, so I recommended GTA: San Andreas, which is the only PS2 game I know of that fits that description. I also recommended Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the XBox 1 and XBox 360 respectively, in case the poster has those machines too.
Anyway, what other games, on any system, do you think fit this description? To a degree, I'd have said Bully, Carmageddon, GTA3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA IV, though these aren't as expansive as San Andreas, Morrowind, or Oblivion.
Red Dead Redemption is supposed to be very open and varied, but I haven't played it so I can't comment.
And as a matter of interest, we may as well do the Speccy, although the limited memory does really limit the chance of finding unique or too varied things. Elite, Where Time Stood Still, Turbo Esprit, Knightlore, Tir Na Nog, and Mercenary were all games that I went exploring in, to greater or less satisfactory results - Mercenary and WTSS were especially fun to explore as you did find interesting things, whereas Turbo Esprit (though undoubtedly brilliant) didn't throw up anything new after a few minutes of play, and Elite never varied much, except in the text descriptions of planet you were near too.
Edit: Just remembered; Damocles and Mercenary III, two incredible games (Damocles was Mercenary II) on the Atari ST that I spent ages exploring.
Post edited by ewgf on
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And good old Pirates, of course. :)
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Anyhoo.....
Bully (PS2/Wii).
Scarface: The World is Yours (PS2/Wii).
GTA: 1, 2 (PC/PS1).
GTA: 3, Vice City, San Andreas (PS2).
GTA: Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories (PS2/PSP).
GTA IV, Lost and the Damned, Ballad of Gay Tony (PS3).
Shenmue (Dreamcast).
Shenmue II (Dreamcast/XBOX).
Yakuza 1 + 2 (PS2).
inFAMOUS (PS3).
Shadow of the Colossus (PS2).
Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance (PS2).
Rygar (PS2/Wii) Not a sandboxer, but you can go back and explore areas previously visited, I don't really recommend the Wii version it's a bit of a let down.
Jet Set/Grind Radio (Dreamcast) Not a Sandboxer but you can replay levels, and go back to earn things you couldn't get with certain characters, you can do races that aren't part of the story, graffitti challenges, and all kinds of crap, you really get to know Grind City if you stick at it.
Chronotrigger (SNES/PS1) best RPG ever made.
Terranigma (SNES) Enix's answer to Chronotrigger before they merged with Square.
Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast/Gamecube).
Any Zelda game I can't be arsed to list them.
Sod it that'll do for now :D
Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow - DS
Civilization Series
Metroid Series
lost in blue 2 -DS (prolly the best true exploration in a game, its kinda like 'lost' in some ways, but its super ****ing hard)
gun - various
far cry 2 - prolly the most beautiful open landscape i have ever seen, with a terrain editor to boot so you can create your own.
desert strike - various (maybe not in the later missions)
body harvest - n64 (mostly open but tries to keep in linear for you)
There's one coming out on the 3DS and apparently it's incredible.
they must have got my letter. :-P
I have played that, or tried to, on both PC and XBox, and never got anywhere, as it's about the hardest FPS ever written (at least amongst the ones I've played). Even a decade after it's release, it's still supposed to be excellent, but the realism kills it for me. You crawl through some bushes, stop, look slowly around, crawl forward a bit more, look around, cra- phut, you're dead. Some sniper three hundred yards away looking through the bottom left-hand corner of a window has head-shot you. Real military-heads love it, but gimme the unrealistic but much more (to me) playable games like Half-Life, Halo and Goldeneye.
How could I forget that? It's still the only flying game I like, as it's not so much a game, more an experience (yes, pretentious advertisments claim that about so many games, but for PW64 I think it's true), and flyign around exploring is brilliant.
Not played them, apart from Far Cry 2 (briefly, not enough to judge), but I should have remembered the brilliant Body Harvest, fantastic game.
Only played Metroid Prime 1 and 2, and nothing else from your list, but I wouldn't really include the Metroid Primes (well, not 1 and 2, I don't know about MP3 as I've not yet played it), as even though they are superb games, enormous fun to explore and with very varied environments, they are very linear games, and I think that the original poster of the topic on Gamefaqs wanted open game worlds. Even so, MP1 was one of the few genre defining games of all time, and also one of the few "Wow!" moments in gaming too.
I've never seen that game, but I've heard of it. What's it about, how does it play, etc?
Some good games there, you listed a few that appeared in the GF topic. Shadow of the Colossus is still on my to-be-played list, and I might well buy the GTA IV add-ons too, if I get the time. And yes, I'd imagine that the Zelda's for the N64/gamecube/Wii would be posted as games suitable for exploration too. Chronotrigger and Skies of Arcadia are two other games that I see discussed quite a lot too.
I never played the second one, but I did play and explore the first one (on XBox 1), but got bored as the game was repetitive and there was so little to see anywhere, except for admittedly beautiful (for the XBox) jungle and island features.
I can't believe Fallout 3 slipped my mind! I played it a while back, but stopped and have been meaning to go back to it again, or more probably restart it as I can't remember much of what I'd done. It's an excellent game. I've not yet played the Vegas add-on, or Red Dead Redemption, though.
Wow!
So Daggerfall is still the largest game world, at 62,394 square miles?
San Andreas, which to me is huuuuuu-uuuuuge, is 'only' 13.6 square miles. Even so, 13 square miles seems awfully tiny for San Andreas, I'd say it felt much larger than that. Probably since the world is so full and varied. GTA: SA is a game where it's worth exploring, as there's so much variation and so much to see.
The beautiful Oblivion is 16 square miles.
I see that Just Cause is 400 square miles - but is the terrain varied enough and littered enough with interesting and different places to make exploration fun?
And Test Drive Unlimited is 618 square miles? What is the terrain like on that, and can you drive off the road, or are you limited to the roads and pre-ordained tracks?
I liked Driver on the PSX, but never played the second, or Pirates (is that the Microprose strategy game on the ST/Amiga?)
They gave that away on a cover disc once, and it was soooo boring....:-o
I've never played it either, and I've never looked it up, but what I've read about sounds fascinating from the likes of Edge. I believe it's based on Rogue, which is a Unix game, and it's a randomly-generated dungeon explorer - and a very primitive one at that. IIRC The Oracles Cave on the Speccy (1983) is an update so that gives you an indicator of it's lineage.
Interestingly, I've just read, "In 1988, the budget software publisher Mastertronic released a commercial port of Rogue for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit[10] and ZX Spectrum computers.[11] (However the Spectrum Version came complete with either a bug or an exploit which could be used to produce identical items within a room)"
I presume this http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004224 is the Rogue in question.
The best way to explore the islands in Just Cause is to get in a plane/helicopter and look at them from above, then parachute down to anything that looks interesting enough to explore...there is a lot of similar looking scenery, but quite a few nice unique areas too...
I'm just glancing at WOS just now, so haven't had time to read the whole thread, but I'll check it out proper tomorrow and see if there's any I can think of that haven't been mentioned..
It's like Red Dead, space between "action areas" but still things to do and explore in that space which makes it seem "fuller".
Both of those games are excellent sandbox games though and if you have the PC for it JC2 looks just as good as RDR. JC2 - Best explosion simulator ever :)
P.S. - Another good way to get around fast in JC2 is to ride the gas bottles
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Or is it like a buffer**, i.e. once the buffer of deformation is full, things just pop back up?
OR maybe if you go far away from the destruction, i.e. out of l.o.s. then it reverts back to its initial state?
How severe can the deformation be? Are we just talking superficial dents, or could you level hills/mountains if you had infinite bombs (or whatever you use in JC2 to cause deformation).
*My guess, as the wiki does not go into specifics as to what can be deformed.
** Like skidmarks in most racing games, the oldest skidmarks disappear after a while or when the "skidmark buffer" is full (FIFO).
You can only destroy certain buildings (outposts, radar sites etc.), but they do remain destroyed.
What, no terrain deformation!?!?!?
It's the only thing I have left to look forward to in future games...
Afraid not. The wiki page mentions the deformation thingy having something to do with individual parts of vehicles falling off (?!), but I can't say I've ever noticed it myself.
I'd love to explore the islands in Just Cause 2 but when i started wandering away i get a message saying 'Too far from mission area' and the game ends! I've tried to complete the mission but i just can't do it (it's the one where you're at the casino and theres a helicopter you have to take out).
I've got the original GTA III and Oblivion still unopened lying on my todo stack. :sad: Any suggestions?
You can drive through most part of the Hawaiian island (even off the tracks), except water and some fenced areas. I used to play this game by randomly driving around instead of joining the races, because it's actually a really beautiful looking area. I haven't play much nowadays though, as I've finally got my license. :)
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I can't remember the mission, but usually the easiest way to take out helicopters is to grapple onto them and hijack them. Give it a go and see what happens. :smile:
GTA: SA just gives the illusion of "big cities" and a whole US state. The three cities are actually, in real-world terms, little more than city centres with a handful of residential streets. The real-life equivalent would have miles of identical suburbs in every direction and since, apart from anything else, these would be extremely dull in a videogame, GTA: SA leaves them out. People playing the game tend to think of the cities as lifelike and large whereas in fact they're just the bits of cities everyone tends to remember - the centre. Similarly, the countryside is condensed down into a handful of distinct regions that, in real life, would be much much larger, samey and tedious and take about half an hour to drive across.
It's clever because the game crams in all the variety we expect in a huge area into a relatively small space. People playing the game tend to feel they really are driving through huge cities and vast, open, countryside and it only clicks how small everything actually is when you realise you can drive from one city to another in less than ten minutes.
Then there's Virus (Zarch) and Zeewolf, where you can go exploring over the map looking for extras like the whale.
Wreckless on the XBox was ostensibly a point-to-point racing game, but later missions revealed that all the challenges were taking place in and around the same city, and you could go off-course and explore the whole thing looking for hidden extra vehicles (within the time allowed for the mission).
All of the Zelda games are based on exploring, though you have to play through the story to obtain the tools and weapons for opening up the whole map. The NES ones look dated but the Gameboy, SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii ones are great, often with some breathtaking surprise that doubles the scope of the game just when you think you've got it mastered.
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